Hubris, pride whichever word fills the gap, is a big, bad thing. You wake day-in day-out thinking about how much you’ve achieved and how successful you are. Making it more difficult to be teachable, making it harder to notice your mistakes and self correct.
I’ve been watching The Profit with Marcus Lemonius on CNBC. He found two guys in their 20s who were doing 1/2 million USD on a sock business. Selling through social media. The marketing skills were top-notch but their numbers were baaad. Barely profitable. Marcus takes them in and tried to create an umbrella organisation with multiple brands he owns in-house, but these 20-something year olds think they’re way better than everyone else. At some point, one says he thinks he should be the leader because he’s run the biggest business there. Which was crazy because he was in a room with guys who’d done 10s of millions in sales. Hubris.
It’s scary to imagine myself going through life feeling above everyone else. Being unteachable, thinking about myself and I what I want. I’d like to think we all do it in some way, if not in general. It could be when you’re in a kitchen and you know you’re the best cook. So you don’t want to listen to anyone. Or in something as simple as math. You’re good at it, so you don’t think anyone can be better.
I think that’s one of the things that’s made the Covid-19 crisis worse in the west. Economies, surveillance systems, healthcare systems were simply unprepared, despite what appeared to be sufficient time. Knowing what we now know, governments should have started taking action months ago. Not in March as many governments did.
Anyway, could there be an area of your life that you feel « unteachable » in?